The Feline Holmes
by MONMUSUfan
Summary: Zootopia Science Institute is renowned for it's brilliance and productivity. But when on the very first day a Professor gets brutally murdered in a seemingly impossible scenario, the students find themselves in an instant inferno. The Police suspects someone who has a very clear motive but is out of wits when they want to discover the trick.
1. Chapter 1

Rambo was busy writing the exam, just like the other examinees he was busy solving the questions. But unlike others Rambo was finishing it in rocket speed.

 _"Let's see, we've to use odd function here, huh easy. This one's a bit tricky, I'll use lagrange transform and then integrate the variable out, easy. The next one's a bit more tricky, let me use a probability transform, solved."_

Rambo finished the paper before allocated time and came out with a wide grin. He was pretty satisfied, now all he had to wait for the results.

It wasn't a surprise when, Rambo cleared the Entrance exam of Zootopia Science Institute(ZSI) and took Mathematics as his Major and Applied Probability as minor, but the surprising fact was that he was the top scorer in the whole Entrance exam, infact he had a perfect score.  
By now anybody should think that Rambo is a nerdy dude, but that would be a horrendous misconception. This Royal Bengal was a great soccer player and the same time a live wire. His distant yet cool attitude earned him the title, "The Cool one."

It wasn't much of a problem in acclimatizing to the hostel life, his room-mate was Jose, a Horse. They quickly bonded as Jose was also a good soccer player and he was also pursuing his major in Mathematics.

Rambo and Jose went together in their classrooms. Their Hostels were in the far side of the campus while their department was in the other end. To address this, the authorities have introduced Campus buses, a bus service which operates to make sure that students face no difficulty in commuting. The charge was already added in the semester fee, so the whole thing was already paid for.

Jose took the window sit and let out a sigh of relief, "Man, this service is very helpful, but I hear that our first class isn't going to be a fun affair."

Rambo smiled and replied, "Is the teacher an obnoxious one?"

"Absolutely spot on, Rambo. She's the bane of the existence of every sane mammal."

Rambo quirked his left eye to indicate his question.

"Well, Ms. Neela, is the sadistic teacher of one's nightmare. She won't give you a perfect score no matter what have you written, she'll find something to cut you down. Even she finds something insignificant as a spelling mistake which other teachers would ignore, she would deduct marks. Her assignments are a bundle of shitloads and my senior said that they even burnt her effigy in the graduation celebrations."

The two with other pupils got down as the department has already arrived, then it was another five minutes walk to reach the classroom. Upon entering the classroom Rambo realized that the strength was moderate, there were 25 pupils including him and Jose, till now.

Suddenly a female Zebra approached Jose, "Hi, so how are you doing, Jose?"

Jose with a wide grin replied, "Hi, Melina. I'm fine how about you?"

Melina laughed heartily and then looked at Rambo, "You're his friend?"

Before Rambo could answer Jose jumped in, "He's my roommate, Rambo. Do you know that he was the topper in the entrance test?"

Rambo's cheeks felt a bit hot, he wasn't acclimatized with this kind of praise.

Melina exclaimed, "Wow, but to be honest you look nothing like a nerd. How can such a handsome man like you be such studious?"

Rambo stroke his neck furs to hide his blushes and replied, "I really don't study that much, I just study till I get a grip on the theory, ten everything becomes easy. Hey nice to meet you, can I tell you that you have very nice eyes? Blue eyes are really rare these days."

Now Melina blushed, the white portion of her cheeks became pink, Jose softly elbowed Rambo, asked quietly "Dude, are you hitting on her?"

Rambo gave Jose a death glare and before he could say anything more , a middle aged Indian Wolf entered the classroom. The pin drop silence meant she was the dreaded teacher, Ms. Neela.

She strode towards the chalkboard and wrote her name, "Hi, I'm Neela and I'll be teaching Ms-101 aka the Probability Theory. I'll specify the marks distribution, 40% weightage on Mid Sem, 50% on Endsem and 10% on Assignments."

"For the beginners, Probability simply means quantification of Chance, but you guys are no beginners, let me see how much you guys have learnt so that I can set the tone of the course accordingly, but first You guys introduce yourselves." Neela stopped to take a breath.

The introduction took around 15 minutes and then Neela proceeded with her question, " How can you randomly choose a person from five persons by using a single biased coin?"Rambo stood up and answered, "I'll flip it five times, I'll consider only those sequences which have a single tail and four heads. Now I'll chose the first person if first flip is a tail, and so on and so forth."

"Fine, but why tail? Why not head?" Neela was back to her game.

"Because using heads isn't cool anymore." Rambo wagged his tail to prove his point and the whole class broke in laughter.

"I'll go easy on you, Tiger-boy. But next time, you'll be my sparring partner in Tae-kwan-do arena." Neela flashed a sadistic grin.

Everybody became anxious about Rambo's fate. Previously one student got hammered by her in the Tae-Kwan-do arena, as that unfortunate guy did accept her challenge to get rid of his punishment for talking and disturbing the class.

Rambo ignored her completely and sat down on his seat, Neela mumbled under her breath, "Fucking cool as cucumber. But too young for my tastes."

The class ended swiftly and now the next class was scheduled to start after Forty-five minutes so the pupils started talking and introducing themselves with each other. A very beautiful female snow leopard approached the the trio, "Hi, You're so cool in the class, you really gave that woman a befitting reply."

Rambo again looked a bit flustered, _"Surely my lucky day, two girls are talking with me with dialated pupils."_

"Well, she had it coming. Whether I use the conventional wisdom or my own algorithm is not for her to judge. She can only judge the logic and rationale of my answer." Rambo answered with glittering eyes.

The Snow leopard extended her right paw for a paw shake, "Btw, I'm Lana."

Rambo quicky shook her paw and replied, "I'm Rambo, nice to meet you Lana."

Jose cut in, "The next class doesn't start before another Forty-five minutes, I say let's go out and explore the Coffee shop. I've heard that their black-ones are the best."

Everybody seconded, as the quartet went for the coffee shop.

"So both You and Jose are roommates?" Lana asked Rambo.

"Yes, we are. You're probably in Hostel 10, I guess." Rambo replied.

"Well, how did you infer that?" Lana looked curious, so were Jose and Melina.

"A very simple deduction. Generally people in a residential college tend to come to the classroom in packs. That's a common psychological booster to cope up with a new and uncharted environment. But you came alone. That could only mean, you know this place too well or you're all alone coming from your hostel. I've heard that three girls from our department were accommodated in Hostel 10, now two of them came together and having chitchat about their hostel, right infront of us. So the only possible explanation would be that you've no departmental room mate and you came alone. That means you are stationed in Hostel 10."Rambo finished his explanation. Jose and Melina looked spell bound.

Lana smiled and replied, "You're a curious one."

Rambo smiled back in appriciation as the coffee mugs got served by then. The enjoyed the coffee and used their free time to chitchat about the best possible reference books and their hostel life.

As the quartet were about to leave,Lana said "Excuse me for a second. I need to use the washroom, you guys go forward, I'll join later." She rushed towards the other end, while the trio lazed back towards the classroom.

It was almost 10 minutes and the next class was yet to start. Students were a bit concerned. "Professor Koman, is never late and it's almost 10 minutes past the scheduled time. Is he calling the class off?" Melina asked his two friends.

Jose replied, "Well, I think one of us should go to his chamber and inform him about the class."

Rambo replied, "It's probably a bad choice, the Profs are very punctual and asking one to take a class might backfire as he might feel offended, so we need to sketch out something not to offend him, like going to the departmental office and asking whether the class is called off or not, then if it's not called off the office will directly contact the Prof."

The students who were listening to their conversation nodded in agreement. Suddenly Lana came rushing in, "It's horrible. I've gone to inquire about the class, but Prof Koman won't open the door, there's a blood stream coming out beneath the door."

Rambo, Jose and other students rushed to the chamber of Prof Koman. The door was firmly locked from inside. Rambo and Jose knocked repeatedly on the door but no response came. The stream of blood already stopped due to lack of a slope.

"Somebody call the office, they must have a spare key for Prof. Koman's chamber." Rambo shouted as Jose sprinted out to get someone from the Office.

A Rabbit hopped in with Jose, with the spare key in his hands. He immediately started using the key to unlock the room and the next spectacle left everybody stunned. Professor Koman, was leaning on his table. The Laptop was still on, though in sleep mode. A small puddle of blood formed under his feet. But there was no blood on his body except his chest region. A knife was sticking out of his chest.

Rambo rushed forward and checked his pulse, "He's already gone, call the police."

The spectacle unnerved most of the pupils as they started to scream. Melina lost her senses and Jose was busy attending him.

Suddenly Rambo stooped and took a sample of the Blood from the floor and smelt it, "Fake blood. Still why the windows are firmly shut and why it's cold inside?"

* * *

Officer Joan Ide and Shane Ro were the two best detectives of the Homicide division of Zootopia PD. When the duo were assigned the case, they knew that this wasn't a regular open and shut case there is more to it.

Joan sighed, "Shameless killer, who would murder a Prof on the very first day of a new semester?"

Shane replied, "Well, it's more of a crime of compulsion, killing on the very first day in broad daylight only shows the urgency of the killer. He/she couldn't wait another day."

"Hmm, you might be correct on that, but believe me we need to treat this case very carefully. We just can't go around and chase after people. They are qualified students and dignified academicians, without solid proof it will only bring shame on us." Joan the Buffalo pulled the brake and got down from the car followed by her Jaguar partner.

A local policeman ushered the duo to the crime scene. "Can we have the autopsy report?" Joan asked.

The duo were given the autopsy report. Joan and Shane read it intently with occasional, "Hmm"s.

"So the Victim is an Badger, stabbed to death in one strike on his heart. The time of death is around 5-8, the body was found at 10.15. Rigor Mortis had already set in. When students saw their teacher, Prof. Koman isn't coming for the class, they went to give him a call and found out the door was locked. So they called the Office and with the help of the Office Janitor Mr. Robin Hop, they opened the door and found the body. Though some fake blood was also recovered from the crime scene." Shane finished the jist.

"So, this is a sort of a locked room murder, hamm do you guys already questioned the involved people?" Joan asked the the policeman.

"We have already done the primary investigation, these people tend to stand out so we have a list of these people we want to interrogate." The policeman replied while handing a piece of paper.

"Hey, can you tell me when the Prof. left for the classes?" Shane asked.

"He had classes from 7.45 in the morning, but he cancelled that class. So we don't know when he did come exactly. There's no CCTV or any other apparatus to ascertain that fact." the Policeman responded.

The duo looked quickly on the list of people to be interrogated, "Hey, Officer Rodham, we'll require a makeshift interrogation room, so can you please help us with that?" Joan asked the policeman. The Labrador Policeman obliged.


	2. Chapter 2: The thickened mystery

Joan called out Shane, "I think she fits the bill. She was the first one to discover the body and using that trick she could have thrown the investigation into jeopardy."

Shane replied, "She's the most suspicious one, still it was a hellishly devious trick. To switch on the AC at 15 degree Celcius to fake a rigor mortis, so that that we mess up on the time of death. Surely these kids are smart."

"I have already ordered a background check on her, one of the Profs even said that her family had a history with the victim, but he couldn't recall it perfectly."

Shane nodded in agreement as suddenly a Fox burst in,"Detective Joan, this is a very revealing information." the fox caught his breath and handed over a piece of paper cutting into the Investigator's hand.

Joan took the cutting and looked on the underlined story, it was a five year old incident, in which a student of ZIS, committed suicide after being severely censured by Professor Koman. His name was Tai Lang the snow leopard, he had a sister named Lana Lang.

Shane had a half smile on his chiselled face, "Hmm...this is a hell of a motive, Joan."

Joan nodded in agreement. As the rookie fox went out to call in Lana Lang.

Rambo in a very hushed voice stated, "Jose, do you remember that incident, when a student of ZIS committed suicide after being censured by some prof?"

"Hmm...now that you mention it, I can recall it very clearly, the guy was some snow leopard, some Tai Lang, committed suicide after his prof blasted him in broad daylight. The news circulated around the national media for some good amount of time" Jose concurred.

Melina overheard them, "I know, what you both are insinuating, still how can you just suspect your own classmate?"

Rambo replied, "I frankly have no idea about herself. From the scenario it seems she has a motive and lacks alibi."

"What? Are you fucking mad?" both Melina and Hose cried out, the whole class was looking at the trio including Lana.

Rambo didn't lower his voice, "When we found the body, the AC was already on. The temperature of that room was somewhere around 15 degree Celsius. Enough to to make cold stiffening of body muscle to mimic rigor mortis. Now rigor mortis do set in only after 2-3 hours of death, so the time of death was dragged almost half an hour and the culprit got an alibi for herself."

Now the whole class was looking at him with awe, suddenly a moose girl jumped up while looking at Lana. "You're the sister of that guy, who committed suicide after he was given Fail and repeat grade by Prof. Koman!"

The whole class was astonished and many of them were cowering in fear from having a murder suspect among them.

Suddenly the rookie fox came in, "Ms. Lana, we need to have you for further questioning, don't worry. It's a routine thing."

Lana looked at her friends with pleading eyes and then left with the cop. Melina slapped Rambo directly in his face, "How can you suspect her. She's my friend and I'm her Badminton partner. I know that girl and You of all people call her a killer. I spit on your friendship Rambo."

Jose tried to mediate, "Don't mind her. She's a bit emotional."

Rambo didn't even bat an eyelid, "She had motive and she could have pulled off that trick. She is a suspect, whether she is our classmate or not is just irrelevant. Truth can't be guided by emotion."

"Damn you and your crappy truth, stupid, idiot. That's why nobody will love you." Melina almost broke down and Jose went to her side to help her, Rambo simply strode out of the class.

"Hey, Tiger boy? What's the big fuss happened just now?" Ms. Neela was looking at the teenage Tiger.

"Well, they still need to learn that truth can't be tailor made. Truth can't be uncovered by emotion." Rambo looked at the floor.

"If I was in your place, I would have started searching for clues to back my theory. That's what scientists do." Ms. Neela smiled.

"So if we search her room, we might find ingredients of fake blood. But it's a lot of trouble. I would rather have the cops take the glory." Rambo replied without a second thought.

"And earn the nickname of a lazy sociopath. And I thought that you're the best of the best?" Ms. neela looked a bit dissatisfied.

Suddenly Rambo's eyes showed a spark," Who else did know about Lana's brother?"

"Now you're on the right track. I'll tell you this, Koman was very hated in this part of the world. There are infinite number of people, who got screwed over by him. And for the incident, everybody in the department knew that." Neela replied.

"Ok, so a professor who was scheduled to take our class would have looked through the student list and got her name and then he/she might have used her as a scapegoat. This can also be an angle." Rambo's eye lit up.

 **(In the Interrogation room)**

"I didn't kill anyone, please believe me." an almost crying Lana pleaded to the detectives.

"All of them use the same technique, don't they? Joan?" Shane wasn't moved by her plea.

"Well, she doesn't have an alibi from 9.30 to 10.00. Her friends said that she left them after she was called by the nature. But the security guy near the main office vouches that he has seen her around that cabin bay of the profs around 9.40." Joan replied.

"Ok, I got a mail from an unknown id. They said that they have vital information about my brother's case and I should wait near the cabin of Prof. Koman around 9.45. I know my brother can't commit suicide." Lana replied.

"Can we see that mail?" Shane asked.

"It's here." Lana handed her smartphone to Shane who checked it.

"Hmm...we'll investigate it and you better tell us the whole story." Joan gave a little press on Lana's shoulders.


End file.
